About HMH

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Houghton Mifflin Harcourt traces its roots back to 1832, when William Ticknor and James Fields established a publishing company that by the mid-nineteenth century included some of the most renowned names in American literature, from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow to Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Mark Twain, and Henry David Thoreau.

In 1880, Ticknor and Fields merged with The Riverside Press, a Boston printing press owned by Henry Houghton and George Mifflin, to form Houghton, Mifflin and Company. Over the decades, Houghton Mifflin launched many notable careers, including those of Willa Cather, Carson McCullers, Philip Roth, Paul Theroux, Robert Stone, Jhumpa Lahiri, and Jonathan Safran Foer.

In December of 2007 Houghton Mifflin Company acquired Harcourt Education, which dates to 1919 when Alfred Harcourt and Donald Brace formed Harcourt Trade Publishers. Early Harcourt lists featured Sinclair Lewis, Virginia Woolf, George Orwell, C. S. Lewis, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Robert Lowell, T. S. Eliot, and Robert Penn Warren. In 1961, Helen and Kurt Wolff became Harcourt's co-publishers, bringing such luminaries as Günter Grass, Hannah Arendt, and Konrad Lorenz. A mainstay of literature in translation, Harcourt later published such celebrated international authors as Italo Calvino, Umberto Eco, A.B. Yehoshua, and Nobel Prize winners Octavio Paz and José Saramago.

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt launched its first combined trade list in 2009. Today, the adult group publishes approximately 90 new hardcover books each year, including cookbooks and the American Heritage® dictionaries. The Mariner Books imprint publishes approximately 70 trade paperbacks per year, including the Best American® series. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt also publishes eBook editions of its front- and backlist titles. Current Houghton Mifflin Harcourt authors include Philip Roth, Tim O’Brien, Adam Hochschild, Temple Grandin, and the estate of J.R.R. Tolkien. In addition, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt distributes books for The Old Farmer's Almanac, Larousse, Chambers, Harvard Common Press, and Zest Books.

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Children's Group

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Children's Book Group encompasses three award-winning imprints as well as the HMH franchise line and the Graphia and Sandpiper paperback lines. Houghton Mifflin introduced its first list of books for young readers in 1937 and has published such luminaries as H. A. and Margret Rey, Virginia Lee Burton, Bill Peet, Holling C. Holling, Scott O'Dell, and James Marshall; its contemporary authors and illustrators include Chris Van Allsburg, Lois Lowry, Steve Jenkins, Joyce Sidman, Brian Lies, Sy Montgomery, and Allen Say. Houghton Mifflin is also home to some of the best-loved children's book characters: Curious George, Lyle the Crocodile, George and Martha, Martha of Martha Speaks, and Tacky the Penguin.